Untitled (The effect of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Kant’s 3rd Critique on the human brain: a functional magnetic resonance imaging approach)

The brain really is a piece of work. You pump in a supply of glucose and oxygen, and the craziest stuff comes streaming out. Amongst these streams are the works of Stravinsky, Kant’s Critiques, and more recently, this piece by Daniel Margulies and Chris Sharp. The film is a continuous fMRI scan of a brain listening to the Rite of Spring and pondering Kant — showing the floods and ebbs of cortical activity as the music rushes through it. Very suggestive, very beautiful.

“Untitled” is currently on show at the Wellcome Trust as part of their exhibition Brains: The Mind as Matter. If you are in London and haven’t been: go! It is a fascinating and delightful show, featuring: a brainbow mouse, a time lapse film of a chick’s brain spinning itself into existence, old medical movies of brain surgery, casts of eminent brains, trepanned skulls, anatomical drawings, phrenological tools, and much much more. Entry is free.